From the London Gazette
OBITUARY
Lavinia Thorndyke OBE, April 1, 1930 to February 14, 2015
Bookseller, mentor and tireless champion of literature, Lavinia Thorndyke has died aged 84.
Lavinia Rosamund Melisande Thorndyke was born on 1 April 1930, the youngest child and only daughter of Sebastian Marjoribanks, the third Lord Drysdale and his wife Agatha, daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Cavanagh.
Lavinia’s eldest brother, Percy, was killed fighting for the Loyalists in Spain in 1937. Twins, Edgar and Tom, both served with the RAF and died within a week of each other during the Battle of Britain. Lord Drysdale died in 1947 and his title and family estate in North Yorkshire passed to a cousin.
Lavinia and her mother made a home for themselves in Bloomsbury, just around the corner from Bookends, the shop gifted to Agatha on her twenty-first birthday in 1912 by her parents in the hope that it would prove a distraction from her work with the Suffragette movement.
In a column she wrote for The Bookseller in 1963, Lavinia recalled: ‘My mother and I found solace among the shelves. To compensate for our lack of a family, we were happy to be adopted by the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice, the Mortmains in I Capture the Castle, the Marches in Little Women, the Pockets in Great Expectations. We found what we were searching for in the pages of our favourite books.’
Lavinia was educated at Camden School for Girls, then took up a degree in Philosophy at Oxford University where she met Peregrine Thorndyke, third and youngest son of the Duke and Duchess of Maltby.
They were married at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden on 17 May 1952 and started wedded life in the flat above Bookends. On the death of Lavinia’s mother Agatha in 1963, the Thorndykes moved into her house in Bloomsbury Square and many a young writer was mentored, nurtured and nourished around their kitchen table.
Lavinia was awarded an OBE in 1982 for her services to bookselling.
Peregrine died in 2010 after a short battle with cancer.
Lavinia remained a familiar sight in Bloomsbury cycling from her home to Bookends. A week ago, after a recent collision with another cyclist resulting in nothing more than scrapes and bruises, Lavinia died suddenly at her home.
She is survived by her only daughter, Mariana, Contessa di Reggio d’Este, and her grandson, Sebastian Castillo Thorndyke, a digital entrepreneur.
Lavinia Thorndyke’s wake was held at a private members’ club for ladies of a literary persuasion on Endell Street in Covent Garden, which she’d belonged to for over fifty years.
In a wood-panelled reception room on the second floor, its windows looking out on to the bustling streets below, people gathered to remember. Even though the mourners had come straight from Lavinia’s funeral, there was a rainbow of colours on display. Women in floral summer frocks, men in white suits and crisp sherbet-coloured shirts, though one man was wearing an egg yolk yellow blazer as if it were his personal mission to make up for the lack of sun on this grey February day.
But then Lavinia’s instructions had been quite clear in the letter she’d left detailing her funeral arrangements – ‘Absolutely no black. Cheerful colours only’ – and maybe that was why the atmosphere was less funereal and more garden party. A very raucous garden party.
Posy Morland was dressed in the same shade of pale pink as Lavinia’s favourite roses. She’d unearthed the dress from the back of her wardrobe where it had hung limply for nearly a decade, hidden behind a leopard print fun fur that Posy hadn’t worn since her student days.
Over the subsequent years, there’d been a lot of pizza, quite a bit of cake and huge amounts of wine. No wonder the dress strained against her breasts and hips, but it was what Lavinia would have wanted, so Posy tugged ineffectually at the tight pink cotton and took another sip of the champagne, which had been another of Lavinia’s express wishes.
With the champagne flowing, the conversation in the room had reached a deafening crescendo. ‘Any fool can put on a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream but it takes real guts to do it in togas,’ she heard someone bray in a booming luvvie voice and Nina, who was sitting next to Posy, giggled, then tried to mask it with a delicate cough.
‘It’s all right, I think we’re allowed to laugh,’ Posy told her, because the two men in the corner behind them were guffawing so uproariously that one had to stop and clutch his knees. ‘Lavinia always said that the best funerals turned into the best parties.’
Nina sighed. She’d matched her gingham dress with her hair, which was currently a vibrant Prussian blue. ‘God, I’m going to miss her.’
‘The shop won’t be the same without Lavinia,’ said Verity, who was sitting on Posy’s other side and wearing grey because she’d argued that grey wasn’t black and that she didn’t have the complexion or the disposition to wear cheerful colours. ‘I still expect her to come barrelling through the door all excited about a book she’d stayed up half the night reading.’
‘And how she’d always refer to five on a Friday afternoon as champagne o’clock,’ Tom said. ‘Never had the heart to tell her I don’t like champagne.’
The three women and Tom, who comprised the staff of Bookends, clinked their glasses together and Posy was sure that all of them were taking time to scroll through their favourite memories of Lavinia.
The breathless, girlish voice, her perfect 1930s English, like a character from a Nancy Mitford novel.
How she’d read everything, met everyone, but was still excited at the thought of new books, new people.
The roses in the same shade of pink as Posy’s dress that she’d buy on Monday and Thursday mornings and arrange carelessly but so artfully in a chipped glass vase she’d bought from Woolworths in the 1960s.
The way she’d call each of them darling and how that ‘darling’ could sound affectionate, reproachful, teasing.
Oh, Lavinia. Sweet, funny Lavinia and the hundreds of tiny kindnesses she’d heaped on Posy. After Posy’s parents had died in a car crash seven years ago, Lavinia had not only given Posy a job but let Posy and her little brother Sam stay on in the flat above Bookends that they’d always called home, and so she was sad that Lavinia was suddenly gone, she really was. It was the kind of sad that sat deep in Posy’s bones and rested heavy in her heart.
But there was also worry. A gnawing anxiety that had taken hold of Posy’s internal organs and kept tugging at them every few minutes or so. Now that Lavinia was gone, who knew what would happen to Bookends? It was highly unlikely, verging on impossible, that a new owner would let Posy and Sam live rent-free in the flat above the shop. It just wasn’t good business sense.
On Posy’s meagre bookseller’s salary, they certainly couldn’t afford to rent anywhere other than the tiniest of shoeboxes somewhere far, far away from Bloomsbury. Then Sam might have to change schools and, if money was too tight to stay in London, they might have to move to Wales, to Merthyr Dyfan, where Posy hadn’t lived since she was a toddler, and camp out in their grandparents’ two-up, two-down and Posy would have to try and get a job in one of the few local bookshops, if